As Hurricane Dorian hits the east coast, Lipscomb students and faculty have started to reflect on the university’s direct connections to the areas affected.
This week at The Gathering, Vice President of Student Life Al Sturgeon spoke about how there are 4 students from the Bahamas living on campus. All of the students’ families have evacuated to safer areas, but Sturgeon still began chapel with a special prayer for those in the Bahamas and any others soon to be affected by the hurricane in the United States.
The National Hurricane Center released an update saying that Hurricane Dorian has ramped its self back up to a category three and is expected to hit the coast of South Carolina later this evening with winds of 115 miles per hour.
Lipscomb Alum Madeline Montgomery of WPEC CBS12 News, based in Palm Beach, was sent to Stuart Florida to watch and report on the storm.
Madeline said that as the hurricane gets closer, officials advise citizens of each area to, “Pack a hurricane kit, which is everything from food to water, clothes and anything they might need in their car. And then from there, the closer they get to the storm they start closing government buildings, schools and then they start ordering evacuations.”
“How the evacuations work is everyone is evacuated by zone. Everyone is zoned, by A, B, etc. and evacuated in that order.”
Colleges in the area also have procedures for evacuation “Most of the schools shut down and decide to close kind of early on in the process” Montgomery said. “When I was in South Carolina the schools made the students leave.”
Kailyn Tyler, a Lipscomb Academy Alum from the University of Miami sent in a brief description of what was going on around campus before she evacuated.
“They had each floor of the freshman towers have meetings.” Tyler Said, “In the meeting, our RA, asked us each if we were staying or leaving. If we were leaving, where we were going and who we’re staying with. Then she went over what was going to happen for the students who stay in the dorms ”
Some of the student’s run into the issue of where to evacuate to when their home is also evacuating, and that is when the schools try to step in. “With students, they do evacuate and I think a lot of the schools try to help students find somewhere to evacuate,” Montgomery said.